Heaven is Real

  

Heaven is such a wonderful place.  I have read a lot about heaven since Roderick’s accident and I can tell you heaven seems more real to me then ever, even though it’s hard to grasp with our human minds.  I’ve also read a lot of NDEs (Near Death Experiences) like ‘Heaven is for Real’; I think that one has blessed me the most.  I hesitated to read these because I wasn’t sure if they would be more confusing then encouraging with all the conflicting beliefs and experiences.  Then when we attended Grief Share our Leader Angela said she had read all about heaven after the death of her mother and it helped so much to imagine heaven, she said some of the stuff out there doesn’t agree with the Bible so just throw that out but don’t hesitate to read, so I did. 

   Later when someone saw me read a book like that I was challenged whether I believed that I said, “I won’t argue whether it is true or not but it helps me imagine Roderick in heaven and that is why I read it”.  I do believe when People that believe in Jesus die they go to heaven so I have no problem believing that some of these experiences are real, now some are weird and don’t seem to agree with God’s Word so those I just dismiss. 

   The one thing that they all have in common is how they feel the love of God like they’ve never experienced here on earth.  They’ve never felt so loved before.  We sometimes question how Roderick can be happy without his loved ones, we are after all his family or even if he is happy how can he not feel for us and want to return to comfort us.  This revelation has helped me a lot; he feels loved like he’s never felt loved before but not just that, he now sees that love surrounding us too.  He knows that with God’s love surrounding us we are cared for with a kind of love that he cannot give us here on earth.  In ‘Heaven is For Real’ Colton mentions that he has seen the Holy Spirit shoot power down when his dad preached.  I think about that a lot, God shows His love in so many different ways and if every time we are sad Roderick sees God comfort us or send people our way or all the different things God does, why should he have a desire to come back to us when he knows that he can do very little compared to what he sees the perfect God with the perfect love do for us. 

   Now again I’m not trying to make this Gospel but I do know the Lord can use other people’s experiences to comfort us and I also know that I cannot imagine God’s love to great, it’s still always greater then I can imagine.

    I often struggle with how to word the fact that Roderick has left us, I know we haven’t lost him, if heaven is real then he’s just moved to heaven and if your child moves to a different country you haven’t lost that child, I often say he has left us because he has gone to live in heaven but in a sense he is still always with us.  So even though I don’t know how to word it I do know the more real heaven becomes to us the more real Roderick stays to us.  We will always have three children even if one of them moved to heaven.  The pain of the separation needs to heal and eventually we get used to the fact that Roderick no longer lives with us but he’s still real and he still lives in heaven.  Roderick is not gone. The reason Roderick‘s moving to heaven is so painful for us is because all communication as we know it in the physical sense is cut off.  Hundred years ago when we couldn’t communicate with everyone around the world like we can today when a family member would move to a different country the separation would be almost unbearable at first because there wasn’t a way to communicate very well but eventually they got used to it.  So it is with Roderick moving to heaven even though the separation hurts a lot right now we will eventually get used to the fact that he lives in heaven but he will always still be our son and very much alive. 

   I am convinced that if we could see the Joy and happiness on his face in heaven right now that alone would take some of the sadness away that we feel when we think of such a happy energetic young man having to leave this earth much to early but we can’t see him, all connection we have with him now is by faith and thank God we have that faith.  I found this paragraph in Roderick's binder which he has written in grade 10, his last school year.  I'm not sure what the assignment was but I thought I'd share it.  Shows his simple faith.  
 
   I have never doubted God's existence and his love for me because that's what I grew up believing.  My parents taught me from when I was very young that God loves me and sent his only son to die for me.  I have never really questioned if God existed.  He has proven to me a couple times that there is a God watching over me.  There have been times where an accident should've happened to me but somehow it didn't.  My Grandparents have always believed in a God.  So have my parents and everyone in my family so I've just grown up with it and never questioned it.  -Roderick